Global stock markets surged almost 2.0 percent and commodity prices rallied yesterday after US legislators struck a deal to halt a round of automatic fiscal tightening that threatened to push the world’s largest economy into recession.Oil prices rose to near 11-week highs and Saudi stocks …

The 958km route will necessitate the building of several tunnels and bridges, with SAR and Fluor working closely to supervise the work. The construction of the rail link is expected to dramatically reduce the amount of time taken by passsengers to travel between the cities on public …

The beginning of a new year has always been a good time to assess where one has been and where one is going. On New Year’s Day P.K. Abdul Ghafour, writing for Arab News, gave a lengthy recitation of achievements in Saudi Arabia [‘The year the Kingdom took a giant leap’] in 2012 including …

You can see the sanctions-induced deterioration in Iran’s production, as well as the beginning of the rise in Iraqi production which I expect to go on in fits and starts for many years, assuming the country can remain politically stable. Iraq has now surpassed Iran in production to become …

Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) has won a $253,381,949 U.S. Air Force contract to support an F-15SA modernization program in Saudi Arabia, the Defense Department said Monday.Saudi Arabia is upgrading its F-15 fleet under a foreign military sales agreement with the U.S., where Boeing (NYSE: BA) will …

Saudi companies appear to be investing heavily in the domestic non-oil economy at the expense of their deposits with banks, with growth in such deposits slowing down through 2012, according to a key bank in the Gulf Kingdom. The slowdown allied with a pick-up in domestic credit to lift the …

Higher Education Minister Khaled Al-Anqari yesterday highlighted the remarkable progress achieved by Saudi Electronic University within two years. ‘SEU will play an important role in realizing the Kingdom’s goal of becoming a knowledge-based economy,’ he said.Al-Anqari said the separate budget …

audis spent around 50 million riyals (Dh48.94 million) in Bahrain on Monday evening to celebrate the New Year.Experts said that the money was spent in cinemas, hotels and restaurants, Saudi newspaper Al Youm reported.According to the daily, 40,000 cars used the 25-kilometre-long King Fahd …

The tally, which Pillay said was based on an ‘exhaustive’ five-month analysis in which researchers cross-referenced seven sources, shows 59,648 people killed between March 15, 2011, and Nov. 30, 2012. It does not specify whether the dead were rebels, soldiers or civilians. Given that the …

Though some will see this as a triumph for digital transparency, there are also less altruistic forces at work. Twitter dedicates a team of at least 20 people to recruiting ‘high-touch clients,’ like celebrities and politicians — who in turn attract other users and make the platform look good. …

2013 will see Iranian influence in the Middle East continue a decline that began with the Arab upheavals of 2011. Iran’s two major allies in the Arab world are Syria and Lebanon. In Lebanon, Iran arms the Shiite party-militia Hizbullah, and does so overland through Iraq and Syria. Since Israel …

This was the birth of what we can now look back on as two decades of threats by Israel to ‘bomb Iran’ — with or without the consent, assistance and/or leadership of the United States — to prevent Iran’s impending development of nuclear capability. Iran was struggling to recover …

Saudi Arabia, one of the largest pharmaceutical markets in the Middle East region, is forecast to expand by 4.7 percent a year to reach $4.7 billion by 2016, Deloitte said Wednesday in its report entitled ‘2013 global life sciences outlook: Optimism tempered by reality in a ‘new normal”. It …

Something rare just happened. Rather than me having to dog various of the media handlers or key policy hands at the National Security Council or White House on whether Chuck Hagel is on or off the SecDef list, I just got a phone call from a senior Executive Branch person in the know who said …

Economists and experts said that the petrochemical sector in Saudi Arabia needed to shift from manufacturing primary products to intermediate and advanced ones, if companies want to survive in domestic and international markets, Al-Eqtisadiah newspaper reported.Otherwise, they said, they would …

U.S. officials claim that Pakistan readied nuclear weapons during the Kargil conflict without the knowledge of then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. But, even at the height of their crises neither India nor Pakistan have attempted, as the U.S. did in 1962, anything quite as foolish as …

A U.S. drone strike in South Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan killed at least six people, Pakistani government officials said on Thursday, including the powerful Taliban commander Maulvi Nazir Wazir. Nazir was killed along with another key commander of his group, Rapa Khan, and four …

I will not vote for Benjamin Netanyahu, especially since his Likud party overlooked Avigdor Lieberman’s legal troubles and moral turpitude in creating Likud-Beteinu. But I understand why many Israelis will vote for Netanyahu, including many who, according to a recent poll, endorse a two-state …

The Gatekeepers is a film about our story, Israel’s story, from the Six Day War until today, as told from a security perspective. Each of the film’s six protagonists — Avraham Shalom, Yaakov Peri, Carmi Gillon, Ami Ayalon, Avi Dichter and Yuval Diskin — served successively as the head of Shin …

Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen has offered bounties worth tens of thousands of dollars to anyone who kills the American ambassador or an American soldier in the country. An audio recording produced by the group’s media arm, Al-Malahem Foundation, and posted on militant Web sites on Saturday said …

Prosecutors in Cairo opened a criminal investigation on Tuesday into allegations that a popular television comedian, Bassem Youssef, who has taken special aim at ultraconservative Islamists on his program, had insulted Egypt’s president, Mohamed Morsi, during his satirical monologues. …

Saudi Arabian Oil Co.’s Vice President for Exploration Abdullah al-Naim died yesterday while accompanying the kingdom’s Oil Minister on a visit to a drilling site in the northwest, Al-Watan newspaper reported.Al-Naim died of natural causes at a field in the Haql area, 225 kilometers (140 miles) …

The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) has introduced seven guiding principles that will serve as a ‘roadmap’ for government bodies when awarding tenders. The aim is to prevent unnecessary and costly project delays, a local newspaper reported.The roadmap provides guidance on how project …

Saudi Arabia’s National Water Company has started work on a 500 million-riyal ($133 million) water storage plant in Jeddah that aims to ensure secure water supplies in the city, the Arab News said, citing NWC.The first phase of a project due to be completed in 24 months includes tanks with a …